With the emoji’s primary function to show helplessness, this face is ideal in situations where someone asks a favour or requires your assistance. Typically, a polite tactic with the emoji is to accompany the face with text so the receiver understands the context. Let’s say your friend wants to borrow money from you but you don’t get paid until next week. You could say: Sorry so skint atm 😣 If it’s a situation where someone is showing you something you don’t want to see, then the emoji could be used as a “too much information” type of message. For example, your friend sends you a pic of their brand new underwear, which also happens to have a hideous pattern on it. If you don’t mind causing a little bit of potential offence, you could say: Put them away! TMI 😣

The emoji was approved in Unicode Version 6.0, the same version update that saw the Grinning Squinting Face.